TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | j u n e 2 0 1 4 7 Q | Can you tell us about your formative years and how you got into medicine? A | I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I would say that my first thought about wanting to become a doctor probably came from my pediatrician, Dr. Romans. I always loved going to the doctor because it was Dr. Romans and even when he gave me a shot. So I think that I was always des- tined to enter a pediatric-related field in medicine like pediatric urology. I attended a great junior high and high school that is now called Harvard- Westlake in N. Hollywood, California, and then UC Berkeley as an undergrad- uate where I majored in mechanical engineering, so I think that's where the science background came from. I had always been interested in building things and putting things together. I thought about becoming a doctor, but I wanted to take the safe route and went for the engineering degree. An engineering co-op after my third year at UC Berkeley, where I worked for Dow Chemical in Walnut Creek, California, allowed me to obtain some hands-on engineering experience. Even with the science background, I also knew that I liked the patient care aspect of medicine because it is so rewarding. So I've been attempting to put the two fields (engineering and medicine) together for my whole career to date. So, here I am. Q | Have you had any mentors throughout your career? A | I consider myself to be very lucky to have had a lot of great mentors, all of whom have shown me the value of hard work in their careers. Some exam- ples are: at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Dr. Grannum Sant, who was my urology chairman when I was a medical student, who also has had a long career in the pharmaceutical industry; Dr. Donald Skinner, my chairman at USC during my urology residency; and Dr. Alan Retik, one of the great leaders in pediatric urology, who was my chairman at Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School during my pediatric urology fellowship. For robotic surgery, I give thanks to Dr. Craig Peters at Children's National Medical Center in Washington D.C. for teaching me about the new field of pediatric robotic surgery while we were at Boston Children's, as well as Dr. Inderbir Gill, a true pioneer in mini- mally invasive and robotic surgery who succeeded Dr. Skinner as chairman at USC. He is a very driven, focused, and accomplished surgeon and academic physician. I feel that I have been blessed with the opportunity to work with so many great mentors. Q | What was it about robotic surgery and pediatrics that inspired you? A | Robotic surgery gives us the ability to do what we already know how to do with open surgery, except now we can do so in a minimally invasive fashion, and I think that's the key advantage of the technology. This is especially important in our field of pediatric urol- ogy where we have many reconstructive procedures for our small patients. We have been doing laparoscopic surgery for many years, where we can easily remove damaged or diseased tissue, and we can try to fix things using con- ventional laparoscopic surgery, but it requires a completely different skillset from what we have learned through open surgery. So finally the technol- ogy has caught up to this with robotic surgery, where we can now do the same surgical maneuvers that we perform with our hands, but now we can do them through tiny incisions with the robot. So for many procedures in pediatric urology, the need for large incisions is quickly going away, especially for internal organs like the kidney, where we previously needed to make large and painful incisions just to get to the organ. We no longer have to do that. The ones who truly benefit are the kids. They are going home faster to be with their families, and the parents don't have to take too many days off from work since they are only spending one night in the hospital instead of two, three, four, or more. They have much smaller scars and therefore less need for pain medications, which helps them to recover faster. Because of these, we believe that all kids who can benefit from robotic surgery should receive it. Q | You built out a substantial robotics program at USC. Tell us a little bit about that and what drew you here to Texas Children's to do the same at the Texas Medical Center. A | In pediatrics, it is a reality that we have to partner with our adult colleagues, as pediatrics will always involve a smaller population than the adult world. At USC, I had the opportunity to partner with top-notch innovative adult surgeons like Dr. Gill, as well as his partners, Dr. Mihir Desai and Dr. Monish Aron, who came with him from Cleveland Clinic to USC, where they brought a world of minimally invasive and robotic surgery experience. (Photos by: Terry Vine Photography) cheSter Koh, M.d., facS, faaP, director of the pediatric robotic surgery prograM at texas children's hospital, and associate professor of urology at baylor college of Medicine, sat down with texas Medical center executive vice president and chief strategy and operating officer williaM Mckeon to talk about robotic surgery, pediatric Medical devices, and the collective experience upon which he and his colleagues are building an exceptional prograM. TMC SPOTLIGHT finally the technology has caught up to this with robotic surgery, where we can now do the same surgical maneuvers that we perform with our hands, but now we can do them through tiny incisions with the robot.

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